


stay with me until i fall asleep (stay with me)

by Anonymous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cancer, Established Keith/Lance (Voltron), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gay Keith (Voltron), Hurt Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Angst, Leukemia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24293098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Keith felt like his life had finally turned itself around, he had friends, a family and a boyfriend... Until he was diagnosed with leukaemia.Then his life began to fall apart.-New chapters whenever I get any inspiration...
Relationships: Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Hunk & Keith (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32
Collections: anonymous





	1. the diagnosis

**Author's Note:**

> Don't hesitate to correct my grammar or give me suggestions on how to make my writing better.
> 
> Please comment! It fuels my writing!

Keith knew something was wrong at some point. Maybe it was when he felt cold all the time, or when he struggled to lift his hand higher than his waist. Maybe it was when he started losing weight, or when he began getting nosebleeds every day and bruised like an apple.

He didn’t want to be a burden, so he didn’t say anything to his foster parents or his foster brother until he couldn’t leave his bed, too weak to get tissues to wipe up the blood. He remembered the day he got his diagnosis clearly. The way his parents had rushed him to hospital, Shiro holding his hand the whole time, and how they’d asked for him to tick off his symptoms. 

They ran him through test upon test upon test until they came up with the results. Stage three acute myeloid leukaemia. Then they told him his life expectancy. Six months confirmed with chemotherapy, four months or less without it. 

His first thought was of Lance, his childhood friend and boyfriend of a year-and-a-half. He imagined his expression when he told him the diagnosis, his life expectancy, that he would have to watch him die. It was then that he made his decision. If he died naturally without treating the leukaemia, he would see his parents again and Shiro, his friends and his foster parents wouldn’t be too sad in the end. They could get more friends or adopt another child, he wasn’t that important. Lance could easily get another lover and he wasn’t enough for people to miss, he was easily replaceable.

When he told his parents and Shiro his decision, they all cried, his mother even begging him to reconsider, however, he’d made his mind up. Even with chemotherapy, he may only get an increase of two months, which would not be worth the money or time or pain of the treatment. It was better for him to accept his fate and allow someone else to get the therapy, someone else with higher chances of survival, who was better and could contribute more to society. 

The second choice he made was that he was not going to tell his friends nor boyfriend about his condition. Instead, he would pull away and dissociate himself from their affections so that it would hurt them less when he died. Lance may be sad over his death when they become only acquaintances again, but it would hurt him more if they remained together and he was forced to watch Keith’s decline.

Once he told his doctor of his decision, they released him, allowing his parents to take him home once they’d been prescribed antibiotics to help stop Keith’s suffering, if only by a little. He also agreed to have blood transfusions once a week after his mother pleaded with him to do it even though he refused to have chemo or radiotherapy.

When Keith got home, he went into his room, feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what he should do to distance himself from his friends. If he thought about it enough, he was already quite distant, he’d rarely speak on the group chats (he doubted that anyone would notice if he left them as well) and at school, he only saw his friends at lunch, break and biology aside from one joint study hall.

“How the fuck can I do this?” Keith whispered to himself as he stared at the pictures Lance had sent him of themselves on their first date. Lance was grinning wide, his left arm hooked around Keith with his right arm extended out, holding the phone to take a selfie. Keith could see the blush colouring his pale skin and the shy smile stretching his across his lips in the next picture as his new boyfriend had turned around and kissed his cheek. He remembered that day clearly, the smell of freshly cut grass, the feel of the sun on his face and the touch of Lance’s hand on his. 

Lance had turned up at his house at seven in the evening with a picnic basket after asking him out on a date the day before. He had then driven Keith to the nearby park in his old blue car and settled them down atop one of the hills, below a tree so that they could watch the sunset together. He had even packed PB&J sandwiches, with a substitution of almond butter as he remembered that Keith was allergic to peanuts. They had sat on a blanket, eating and talking, the sun setting and the moon appearing as the night went on.

Keith remembered how Lance had brushed his cheek and pushed back his hair before kissing him, so softly. He didn’t feel the fireworks or explosions that everyone said happened, but he felt like everything finally slotted into place. Lance tasted like mints and chocolate as he moulded his lips to Keith’s. 

From then on they were inseparable. 

‘I’ll be lucky if I see what would be our second anniversary.’ Keith thought to himself, tears welling up in his eyes and starting to roll down his face as he dropped his phone onto the bed. He gnawed at his thumb as he lay on his side, lacking the energy to get ready, instead just closing his eyes and succumbing to the pulling exhaustion.


	2. a normal day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this next chapter u can rly tell i have no s/o and that i cannot do groupchat fics

“Keith! Are you ready for school?” Shiro called, peering around Keith’s ajar bedroom door. It had been almost two months since Keith’s diagnosis and he was slowly becoming weaker. Some days he would be too tired to lift his body from his bed or he would be unable to go to school due to being too bruised to not be questioned by other students. Keith guessed he was lucky in one sense, that his school was still willing to let him attend, even though he would be unable to graduate. 

As Shiro looked in, Keith was sitting upright on his bed, holding a thick wad of tissues to his nose to stem the flow of blood. He shook his head as he locked eyes with Shiro, his head pounding as his nose had been bleeding constantly for the past fifteen minutes. 

“How long?” Shiro questioned, his eyes looking worried as he stepped forwards, preparing to take Keith to a hospital if it had been too long and he’d lost too much blood. The younger male stuck up one hand, opening and closing it three times to show that it had been fifteen minutes since his nosebleed began. 

“I’ll go and get you your supplements and some painkillers before I leave then,” He shifted back, leaving the room before poking his head back in. “I’ll get Mum to phone your school as well.”

Keith lay back, resting on his wall as he continued to tilt his head down, waiting for the blood to stop flowing. He looked up again when Shiro went in for the last time, bringing him his supplements and a glass of water to wash them down with (otherwise they sometimes stuck to his throat which tasted absolutely vile).

“Remember, you can call me at any time if you need my help,” Shiro said before noisily heading down the stairs and leaving the house. Their home was almost silent as Keith listened to his brother’s car leaving the driveway. Once his nosebleed stopped, Keith sent Shiro a text to assure him that all was well and took his medicines before turning his attention to the group chat.

-

**VoltrOwOn**

-

 **Members** \- KoGay, ByeBiBye, Priceless, Shiro, Pingde and HunkaHunk.

-

 **ByeBiBye:** keeeeeeef where r u??? i saw ur bros car but i cant see u???

 **HunkaHunk:** Are you by the lockers Lance? I’ve got Pidge with me but not Keith.

 **Pingde:** yeesh u dont hafta say it like im being babysat 

**ByeBiBye:** b a b y p i d g e

 **HunkaHunk:** Lance. C’mon dude you know that’s mean be nice.

 **KoGay:** srry guys i wont be in tday

 **Pingde:** smH ur really leaving me with ur r a t of a boyfriend 

**ByeBiBye:** eye-

 **ByeBiBye:** awh babe :((((( 

**ByeBiBye:** i’ll miss u :((((

 **HunkaHunk:** We’ll all miss you dude hope you feel better soon!

 **Pingde:** i can already see ur boyf lookin sad at ur locker yikes u really left us w him???

 **ByeBiBye:** don’t be mean to me :((( i’m miss my boy

 **KoGay:** ill b in tomrrw i think 

**Pingde:** shit the bells gone ttyl keef we gtg

 **HunkaHunk:** See you tomorrow!!

 **ByeBiBye:** byebye babey ill text u privately later <3

 **Pingde:** stfu lance ur gonna be late iversons abt to come into the room

 **ByeBiBye:** shit

-

Dropping his phone down on his bed, Keith moved over to his cluttered desk to check his emails and then email his teachers for the day to ask about any missing work. He always felt awful when he missed the work and got away scot-free like it was all okay because he wouldn’t end up graduating so he shouldn’t bother. But then he also felt it was quite selfish to still ask for the work, to keep on acting like everything was normal, even though his end date was coming closer day by day.

Once he sent the emails, he stretched and stood up, wiggling his feet into his slippers as he prepared to go downstairs and get something for breakfast. He swayed a little as he stumbled towards the door, still feeling a little weak from the bloodloss, before sitting down at the top of the stairs. Whilst it made him feel stupid and childish, sliding down them as he was sitting was the safest way to go down them when he was home alone, in case a sudden bout of dizziness hit him.

Again, he took a moment to stabilise himself as he straightened up at the bottom of the stairs, before slowly walking over to the kitchen to get some toast. He deliberated for a few moments over what he should have before deciding on plain buttered toast, his stomach feeling a bit sensitive from the blood he had accidentally swallowed during the bleed.

Keith started a little as he felt a tail move up his leg. Looking down, he saw Aka curling around his feet, some of her loose ginger fur rubbing off onto his trousers before she jumped up on to the countertop. It wasn’t something she, or Kuro, were supposed to do, but Keith wasn’t in the mood to shoo her off. Absentmindedly, he rubbed at her ears and he chewed his toast, looking out into the garden. 

After eating, Keith returned upstairs, this time with Aka trailing behind him, and sat at his desk, pulling open one of the drawers to retrieve his journal. It wasn’t really a journal but rather a place where he had to note every ‘incident’ that affected him, such as a nosebleed, a faint, heavy weight loss or anything else that could further shorten his lifespan.

By around four o’clock, he had finished up his work, taken a few more iron supplements and was just sitting on his bed when his phone buzzed. He picked it up, the screen lighting up as it buzzed again.

-

**Mine**

heyyyyy babyyyyyy do u think i could come to ur house?? i wanna see uuuu xx <3333

**Mine**

ofc if u arnt feelin good enough i get it <333

**You**

come over, ive been a bit lonely tday

**You**

also i wnna see u too 

**Mine**

i’ll be right over babeee!!!! see u in a bit xxxxxxx

**You**

see you soon :)

-

Keith smiled as he sent off his response, excited to see Lance after his bloody morning and boring day.


End file.
